Google Trends®: Ready for real-time suicide prevention or just a Zeta-Jones effect? An exploratory study

Two studies have shown that increasing the consultation of the word suicide in the Google search engine was associated with a subsequent increase in the prevalence of suicide attempts. The main goal of this article was to explore the trends generated by a key-word search associated with suicide, depression and bipolarity in an attempt to identify general trends (disorders epidemics in the population/real events vs newsworthy advertisement/media event). Based on previous studies, the frequency of the search words how to suicide and commit suicide were analyzed for suicide, as well as depression (for depressive disorders) and bipolar disorder. Together, these analyses suggest that the search for the words how to suicide or commit suicide on the Google search engine may be a good indicator for suicide prevention policies. However, the tool is not developed enough to date to be used as a real time dynamic indicator of suicide epidemics. The frequency of the search for the word suicide was associated with those for depression but not for bipolar disorder, but searches for psychiatric conditions seem to be influenced by media events more than by real events in the general population. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.